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France warned Yemenia Airways on Friday it must make "very big efforts" to avoid being blacklisted in Europe following the Airbus crash off the Comoros.
Facing protests from France's large Comoran community, President Nicolas Sarkozy named a former ambassador to Sudan to personally handle requests from grieving families.
Sixty-six French nationals were among the 153 people on board the Yemenia Airbus that crashed in the Indian Ocean Tuesday. A 12-year-old girl is the only survivor.
"This company is under strict surveillance," said French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau.
"If it does not want to go on the black list, it will have to make big efforts, very big efforts," he told RTL radio.
Yemenia executives were to meet senior transport officials in Paris after Bussereau spoke of several "worrisome defects" detected during a maintenance check on the Airbus A310 in 2007.
Yemen's official carrier has rejected criticism of its safety standards.
Yemenia Airways is not on the EU blacklist, which is regularly updated, and contains the names of more than 200 airlines or firms which are either banned from operating in Europe or only allowed under strict restrictions.
French-Comorans have accused Paris of giving them less consideration than the families of victims of Air France Flight 447 last month.
Sarkozy's special envoy Christine Robichon "will work on the various requests from the victims' families, including the chartering of an aircraft to carry them closer to the crash site," said a foreign ministry spokesman.
The families want the government to charter a plane for them to attend funeral services in the Comoros, saying bereaved Air France relatives were flown to Brazil after the June 1 crash.
The French government has denied any difference in treatment between families, pointing out that Air France -- not the government -- flew the relatives of the AF 447 crash to Brazil.
During Friday prayers in Marseille, imam Mohamed Danouni called on the 80,000-strong Comoran community to refrain from giving in to anger following several protests that raised tensions in the Mediterranean port city.
Some 300 people joined a multi-faith prayer ceremony in Marseille on Friday in memory of the victims.
"This tragedy affects our whole country. Rest assured that all the people of Marseille share your pain," said the mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin, who attended along with local Christian and Muslim leaders.
The ill-fated Yemenia flight left Paris via Marseille on Monday aboard a modern Airbus A330 but passengers switched in Sanaa to the older A310 jet to continue to Djibouti and Moroni.
Yemenia on Thursday announced it was suspending flights to and from Marseille, after throngs of Comoran protesters besieged its check-in counters.
Sarkozy announced Thursday that he would sit down with the grieving families next week to reassure them that they "have a right to the truth."
France has mobilised vessels and search teams to take part in the recovery effort and is carrying out an investigation into the disaster. Sarkozy insisted his government had done as much as it could.
"The plane left from a foreign country and belonged to a foreign company," he said.
"Some measures were taken in France. But there is no question that we now need to have global regulations so that a company deemed dangerous cannot carry passengers anywhere in the world," he said.
France's Comoran community had long denounced the Yemeni carrier's use of ageing Airbus A310 planes.
The 19-year-old Airbus involved in the crash was not formally barred from entering France but had not returned to the country since the defects were detected in 2007, said a French transport official on Friday.
Bussereau had on Tuesday said the aircraft had been barred.
"The A310 was not formally barred in a legal sense but was under such de facto tight surveillance that it has not been seen on French territory since the check" by civil aviation controllers, said a spokeswoman for Bussereau.
In July 2007 French authorities would not allow the plane to leave France without having been overhauled.
